His BA against in the 1st half was roughly .230 while in the second it jumped to .330. Amazingly in the first half he stranded 91% of the runners so of course, it regressed back down to 69% in the 2nd half. This part looks like it was just regression but his control seriously spiked up to levels not seen since 2006. His strikeout rate stayed in line with the last 2 years so his K:BB ratio significantly dropped in the 2nd half. My last bit of true statistical analysis was his HR/FB% went from 9% to 20% in the second half. The problem is that even the 9% isn't "normal" for him. The last time his HR/FB% was 9% was 2004 as he usually sits around 6-7% for the last several years.
So this got me thinking as to why his HR/FB% suddenly spiked up and since I'm a visual style learner, I decided to look at my PFx graphs. Before I move onto my graphs, I must explain there are some slight differences in how I present them now. All of them use the averages for each game just like before however there are now two lines. First is the normal daily average which is the blue line. This represents the group average for all of the pitches/events on that particular day. The second line (red) is a "moving average" of the last 5 games which is the average over 5 games which I use to notice trends by flattening out the large fluctuations. Each new day's average is added to the average and the oldest game is dropped, thus "moving" the average over the time. Please let me know what you think.
The two main graphs I want to show for end speed is the end speed of the fastball and the changeup.
Fastball:
Changeup:
These two graphs show me that the difference of speeds between the two shrank dramatically over the course of the season. By the end of the year the difference was only 4 MPH and the changeup was in fact coming in faster than slider with obviously much less vertical movement.
This to me is worrisome because clearly it effected his performance. This was my first concern.
The release point looked good, basically consistent across the whole board except for his changeup release point. This started to drop by the end of the year. But going to the movement, you really see what happened.
(FA)
(CU)
(CH)
(SL)For every pitch, his movement decreased from around July onward. This is not "statistical correction" or luck, that is a skill that was became less effective. The slider by the end of the year basically was coming in flat and difference of movement was only about 2". Think about that, the changeup is coming in at 4MPH less and only moving about 2". Professional hitters can easily adjust to that.
Summary
Fantasy managers (and Mike Scioscia) love Lackey for his durability overall ability. In the first half of last year he was near super human when he came off the DL. Many people thought his statistics were merely regressing towards the mean. Without having reliable PFx data from 2007, I can’t do a direct comparison. What I do know however, is that at the time when his movement was suffering significantly his performance also suffered significantly. Towards the end of the year, all of the movement on his pitches worsened and the velocity difference between his changeup and fastball decreased.
While this is surely not a tell all to end all, it’s another piece in the puzzle of risk management and draft prep.
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